It’s been a busy year! 2015 saw considerable global challenges – such as the Nepal earthquake, rising global inequality, conflict in South Sudan and Syria and the refugee crisis, among others.

It was also a year of momentous achievements – world leaders committing to 17 Sustainable Development Goals designed to end extreme poverty by 2030, and an historic if imperfect global climate deal at the COP climate talks in Paris.

Thanks to the inspirational support of our donors, campaigners, supporters, volunteers and staff, Oxfam’s programmes during the past 12 months helped a record 25 million lives around the globe, through our emergency responses, development projects and campaigning.

So to review the year, we wanted to share just a small selection of photos which illustrate how your support helped Oxfam make an incredible difference during 2015.

Vanuata was left devastated by Cyclone Pam in March 2015. Pictured here is Marie-Lea with a voucher from Oxfam. We have been assisting families affected by Cyclone Pam by distributing vouchers to be exchanged for farming items, building materials, and other general goods. The aim is to help them rebuild their livelihoods and grow food. Photo: Adrian Lloyd/Oxfam

A man in Kathmandu, Nepal washes his face at an Oxfam tap stand in the Tundikhel camp for people displaced by the earthquake in April 2015. We have delivered essential aid – including emergency shelters, hygiene kits, clean water and sanitation facilities – to more than 445,000 people affected by the quake. Photo: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam

All summer, we brought our Even it Up campaign around Ireland, north and south, and 25,000 people backed our call for action on inequality. We highlighted that just 80 people – few enough to fit on our double decker bus – have the same wealth as half the world’s population and urged world leaders, including the Irish and UK governments, to tackle the root causes of inequality. Photo: Press Eye

August 2015: Female Food Heroes, the Oxfam-supported initiative in Tanzania, continues to empower female farmers through its accompanying reality TV show. The programme highlights the vital role played by women in lifting communities out of poverty, as participants compete in farming tasks and learning about leadership, women's rights and finance management. The show attracts 21 million viewers – approximately half the population of Tanzania. Pictured is participant Edna Kiogwe, tackling a task during filming. Photo: Coco McCabe/Oxfam

Children participate in a lesson about hygiene at an Oxfam community centre in Zaatari camp, Jordan, in September 2015. By providing drinking water, toilets and showers, community centres, hygiene promotion and waste collection, we support some 25,000 of Zaatari’s 80,000 residents displaced by the conflict in neighbouring Syria. Oxfam has so far reached more than 1.6 million people in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon with life-saving clean water and sanitation. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

The public showed their compassion for the plight of people fleeing conflict and poverty and urged governments to make ‘Refugees Welcome’ – here standing up and being counted on Sandymount Strand, Dublin, in September at an event organised by a coalition of Irish NGOs. The Irish and UK Governments committed to opening their borders to more vulnerable refugees. We are supporting asylum seekers who have arrived in Serbia and Greece, as well as in Italy. Photo: Steve Kingston

Pictured in November 2015 is Zewudie Dagnew with her son Ashenafi Aragaw in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, where Oxfam’s R4 Rural Resilience Initiative is helping farmers increase their resilience to challenges like drought. Farmers there speak of how weather patterns have changed over time and how the rains that feed their crops are coming later than they used to and departing sooner. Photo: Coco McCabe/Oxfam

Megacone perform on the Oxjam stage at Electric Picnic 2015. As well as organising events and campaigning at summer festivals, Oxfam Ireland called on music fans across the island to put on their own pop-up events as part of the Oxjam Gigmaker campaign. Photo: Olga Kuzmenko.

Oxfam aid worker Amy Christian talks to refugees from Afghanistan as they wait outside a registration centre for migrants and refugees in Preševo, southern Serbia in October 2015. We are working in Serbia to help some of the thousands fleeing to safety, providing clean water, toilets and showers. In Greece we are providing hot meals and winter kits, while in Italy support includes housing, food, psychological support, legal assistance and language classes. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam.

“Clean water – thank you Oxfam!” Brian collects water from an Oxfam water tap in Lologo, Juba, South Sudan. Since conflict broke out in December 2013, more than 10,000 people have lost their lives and 1.5 million people have been forced from their homes. We are currently supporting 690,000 people with humanitarian assistance, including clean water, hygiene facilities, food, fuel and income support. Photo: Fred Perraut/Oxfam

We are one of 17 Oxfams working for change in more than 90 countries – these pictures represent just a few of our projects in Tanzania, Nepal, Jordan, South Sudan, Vanuatu and Ethiopia.

None of the work we do could happen without your support. You helped save lives and rebuild livelihoods after natural disaster struck Nepal. You showed generosity and compassion to those affected by the fighting in Syria. You gave a voice to those affected by the migrant crisis and forced our governments to strengthen their responses. You pushed businesses and institutions to reform practices that reinforce inequality.

You shopped with us in our 49 shops throughout Ireland. You danced with us at Oxjam 2015. You hosted your own events to raise awareness and funds. You donated to our fundraising efforts, including our Oxfam Unwrapped campaign. You supported our Even it Up campaign, to tackle the root causes of inequality.

You are making a difference – thank you! We look forward to your continued support in 2016 so that we can secure further progress towards our vision of a just world without poverty.

A new photo exhibition – Make Them Visible – opens this month in Belfast to highlight the situation faced by people displaced by conflict in South Sudan.

World Press Photo award-winner Kieran Doherty, whose family is originally from Belfast, travelled last year with Oxfam to South Sudan. Kieran’s striking photos from the trip now form a new exhibition in Belfast’s Linen Hall Library, where Kieran will also deliver an illustrated lunchtime talk, to share his impressions of South Sudan and the human stories behind his images.

There is an acute humanitarian crisis in South Sudan, after what began as a localised conflict on 15 December 2013 quickly spread across many parts of the country. Over 1.5 million people have since been internally displaced as a result of the conflict.

Above-left: 35-year-old Richard Corodo lives in St Mary, where he was treated for cholera. Oxfam has distributed chlorine sachets and clean buckets for people to treat their own drinking water, as well as rehydration salts to be used in emergencies. Latrines and hand washing stations have also been constructed to help prevent the spread of disease.

Above-right: 1. Nyanror Derwer Reeng (62) is widowed and is living with her daughter’s family in Mingkaman: “All I think about is being free again. I’m blind but I can hear the fighting and I wish for peace in my country so I can go home again.” 2. A woman hangs her washing out to dry between two shelters in Juba. Many leave behind their precious livestock and find themselves destitute, without belongings or a means of making money. Many families arrive in host communities which are already stretched. 3. Both government forces and an alliance of rebels have been accused of committing atrocities. Many families around the country have taken refuge at camps protected by UN peacekeepers. A camp in Bor, where people from the Nuer community were staying was attacked by armed youths. This ten-year-old boy was shot three times in the head and miraculously survived the ordeal. Photos: Kieran Doherty/Oxfam

The fighting which has forced them from their lands has also prevented them from planting crops. Almost 4 million people are estimated to be severely hungry, with 30,000 people experiencing extreme and dangerous hunger levels in war-ravaged Unity state.

Oxfam is currently supporting 690,000 people with humanitarian assistance in South Sudan, including clean water, hygiene facilities, direct food aid, fuel and livelihoods support. Oxfam has also helped over 100,000 South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia and 145,000 in Uganda.

Doherty said: “I met ordinary people forced into an extraordinary situation – vulnerable people in a forgotten crisis.

“Behind each photo is an individual human being – just like you and me – who has had to flee, leaving behind belongings, a home, friends and often family.

“Hopefully this photo exhibition can then help make these ‘invisible people’ visible by highlighting the situation of South Sudanese refugees and their families.”

Above-left: 1. Following an attack in their camp, women were not allowed to venture outside to gather wood, which meant there was no fuel to cook the food that was being distributed. Six weeks later, the gates were opened for an hour to allow women to fetch as much wood as possible from designated areas. 2. Pooch Mangyak with his fish on the River Nile. With so many people away from their homes and unable to plant their crops again this year, the food crisis is worsening. The River Nile is a source of food for both locals and those who have newly arrived in Mingkaman. Oxfam is distributing fishing equipment to displaced families to help supplement their diet.Above-right: Portrait of Kieran Doherty by Simon Kreitem. All other photos: Kieran Doherty/Oxfam

The Make Them Visible exhibition runs in Belfast’s Linen Hall Library from Tuesday 10th to Saturday 28th November, with a free lunchtime talk on 12th November at 1.30pm. The exhibition is part of EUsaveLIVES, an Oxfam campaign in partnership with the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO), to raise awareness about the situation of refugees and displaced people

Seven out of 10 Irish people are proud of the country’s generosity in supporting humanitarian relief efforts, according to a recent survey by Oxfam Ireland released as part of World Humanitarian Day, the 19th of August.

To mark this, Oxfam’s Colm Byrne reflects on his trip to CAR and the effect of humanitarian crisis there.

Where is that?” almost everyone replied when I told them I was going to the Central African Republic (CAR). The clue in the name not being enough, they then searched the web to learn more and if truth be known, so too had I once. Information, at least in the western media, is sparse. It is clearly not without reason that this landlocked country bordered by some of the African continents most conflict affected states - Chad to the north, Sudan to the north east, South Sudan to the east, DRC and Congo to the south – was once referred to as “the Phantom State”.

In 2012, the country experienced its fifth coup d’état since independence in 1960 sparking extreme violence as Christian self-defense groups (anti-Balaka) fought with the fractured Muslim rebel alliance (Séléka) that had brought a new President to power. The humanitarian consequences were devastating as 6,000 people died and almost a million were displaced within the country and to the surrounding states with only French and UN intervention preventing still greater catastrophe.

Today CAR is again largely out of sight and out of mind as Communities struggle to recover and reports suggest dangerous food shortages in many parts of the capital Bangui. This is in no small part because the local markets, the lifeline of commercial activity providing both access to food for the city’s inhabitants and a means to earn an income for traders, have been disrupted. Territorial lines drawn between once neighbourly Communities limit the movement of both traders and consumers for fear of violence both within the city and beyond. Trapped, local traders told me “we were like slaves”. Maqil, who buys and sells oxen told me he cannot now travel safely to the countryside to buy them. Even aid convoys are being attacked in CAR as banditry is common.

Some traders too were robbed or beaten during the fighting and to add to their woes are now left without capital with which to resume or sustain trade and so provide for their families. I met Anna, a member of one of over a hundred local trade groups who are receiving training and cash grants from Oxfam to restart their businesses, who invited me to take a short walk to her stall. It’s meagre stock of just 5 pieces of cloth and 3 handbags said everything. And there are no social protection mechanisms in the form of social welfare or insurance schemes to fall back on here.

But for Anna and other traders like her, the talk is not now of handouts or more aid as trade group names such Sara Agayé (Do anything to become something) and Wali Guida Loudo (Women of Guida Get Up) serve to prove. These are proud and resilient Communities who despite living in the most difficult of circumstances ask no more than a step back up on the ladder. And the traders, working together as united communities regardless of religious identity, plan to return better than before too. Ali, another trader, tells me that “now we have learnt about marketing, know how to use and save our money effectively and understand better now the importance of quality”. “Before we didn’t save or plan” said Anna “but the training has provided us with habits, taught us how to sell and engage with our customers”. The Sara Agayé group plans to buy tools and higher quality seed e.g. Japanese and Italian cabbage, which will allow them to sell higher quality produce at a higher price.

Beneath the optimism however, there exists a very real fear of being forgotten again. Conflict affected Communities in the Central African Community have been promised much by the international Community before and remain cautious about whether even committed support might ever materialise. As I leave the city, the market is flooded ….. not with consumers but with seasonal rains. The traders remain steadfast by their stalls and from the comfort of my passing car I try to take a photograph of a committed phone card salesmen standing knee deep in water. These traders will not give up….but they do ask for a step up.

EU and Oxfam work together to help refugees and other vulnerable groups in humanitarian and conflict situations around the world. Your continued support makes this possible. Read more at eusavelives.org

Above: Oxfam’s Helena O’Donnell with Syrian refugee children in Lebanon. 1 million Syrians have left their home country for Lebanon since the war began.

“Bubbles my dog and my Xbox” was the emphatic response of one young Cork schoolboy when asked what he would miss most from home.

“Minecraft… my bedroom… my trampoline” and “my football” were the other homely comforts for the boys of Scoil an Spioraid Naoimh in Bishopstown, Cork.

I was speaking to the boys about their homes, what they loved most about being at home and what it must feel like for the Syrian children who have had to leave their homes due to war and conflict.

It’s a very sad story to speak to young children about. The war in Syria is in its fifth year and much of the country is now in ruins.

Almost 4 million Syrians have had to flee their country, with over 1 million of these moving to live in refugee camps in neighbouring Lebanon.

On an unusually stormy day in May I was welcomed to Cork by the pupils of Scoil an Spioraid Naoimh, who were eager to hear about the Syrian children they had heard about on the news. The heavy hailstones and rushing wind in the deserted school yard set the mood for the sombre discussion ahead of me.

Loaded with large colour photographs of Syrian children and stories of the families I had met when visiting refugee camps in Lebanon earlier this year, I struggled to think of how I might explain to primary school children the impact of war on boys and girls the same age as themselves.

I shouldn’t have worried. From the moment I arrived, I was greeted with cheers, energy and positivity from the 1st to 6th class boys who were delighted to have the chance to leave their classrooms and convene in their sports hall to talk about soccer, how much they love it, how much Syrian children love soccer and how their pre-loved jerseys would be put to good use by an emerging football team in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley.

Above: Oxfam’s Helena O’Donnell with some of the pupils of Scoil an Spioraid Naoimh in Bishopstown, Cork, who organised a shipment of sports gear for Syrian refugee children living in Lebanon after hearing news reports about them.

Earlier this year, the big-hearted pupils had been inspired by news reports about Syrian refugee children living in Lebanon and decided to come together and collect all their pre-loved and unused sports jerseys and soccer boots and send them over on a sponsored shipment to the boys and girls of the Al Jalil children’s centre in Beqaa Valley.

When I visited the centre in March, the bright-eyed Syrian children I met told me, through a translator, that they were very happy there and loved to play soccer, play group games like musical chairs and take turns in the arts and crafts room. As I laughed and joked with them it had struck me how much they had seen in their short lives and reflected on how serious a conflict it was to have driven them this huge distance from their homes in Syria.

The Oxfam-funded centre tries to give refugee children, frequently homeless, a space to enjoy the pastimes they loved so much back home. It helps Syrian children, traumatised by what they have seen, to restore some normality and fun to their lives.

Above: Refugee children at the Oxfam-supported Al Jalil children’s centre in Beqaa Valley in Lebanon where activities like soccer and art provide a respite from the day-to-day challenges of being so far from home.

The centre has had huge success forming a mixed gender soccer team. As you can see from my pictures, the boys from Bishopstown, Co Cork are delighted to have the chance to help bring a sense of hope and fun for the refugee children.

As we mark World Refugee Day this Saturday (July 20th), we would like to say a huge well done to everyone at Scoil an Spioraid Naoimh. They have raised vital awareness in their own community about the situation facing Syrian refugees and shown solidarity with displaced communities who have escaped the violence in Syria.

*Thank you to the EU which funded the media trip to Lebanon which generated the news reports mentioned in this article, part of the EUsaveLives campaign. For more information on the project, click here and visit www.eusavelives.org

About three months ago, on the morning of 14 March 2015, I opened the door of my home in Port Vila slowly, not sure what I would see outside after Severe Tropical Cyclone Pam had screeched its way across our beautiful Vanuatu. At the time I thought, and wrote, that our world would be quite different out there. And it was. My first impression was of the physical devastation. My second (just a few minutes later) was that somehow we now had a cat in our garden! The phrase “raining cats and dogs” came to mind. We named it “Cat Five” and took care of it, but that’s another story for another day.

None of us in Vanuatu could imagine what a Category 5 cyclone would do to Vanuatu. Our Oxfam team tried to. We had to prepare and work with our partner organisations to prepare for something, the impact of which we were really not sure of as the country had little experience of a cyclone of this magnitude. None of us were too sure about how we and the whole of Vanuatu would respond to whatever Pam did to our country and people.

Only a few minutes out of my home’s door, I had a good sense of both. Large parts of Vanuatu had been devastated. It was, quite simply, bad. Pam had been cruel to our country in many ways. She had ripped large pieces of it to shreds leaving it looking naked and fragile; and leaving many of us feeling that way too. Pam had killed mercifully few for the magnitude of her force. But the people of Vanuatu were already out there, taking control of their own fate, making sure that Pam’s “control” was not allowed to settle over us or hold us back for a moment longer than it could.

In the early days after Pam, we only had ourselves to rely on. The outside world was cut away; and most of the many beautiful islands that make up Vanuatu were isolated from each other too. This didn’t stop families, friends, communities, organisations, government departments and our amazing team of Oxfamers just getting down to work and starting to make things better in whatever way possible. It was amazing to watch and an incredible privilege to be part of. Like the rest of Vanuatu, our Oxfam team emerged safely, a little dazed and tired, but ready to get on with whatever needed to be done.

Much has been said of the amazing Vanuatu response across all forms of media and in early pieces of research. Resilience was what people called it as soon as they could give it a name. That label, for me, quickly became too commonly used — taking away the “something special” that I felt and saw happening in Vanuatu. But what else could it have been? I searched my (very tired) brain for other ways to describe it, to give it a title which had a deeper sense of specialness for me. No luck. And then I looked at synonyms for resilience and there hidden among terms such as elasticity, buoyancy, hardiness and toughness was a word that fitted better: spirit. A simple term, but one which captured the essence of what I was seeing and feeling among our Oxfam team and the general population — a spirit that was strong, positive, realistic, practical under stress and located somewhere deep in the fabric of the people of Vanuatu, deep in their culture and traditions, deep in their hearts and minds.

Three months on and this spirit has done, and keeps doing, amazing things. And it is everywhere. Thanks to the amazing support of people across the world, we were able to launch a solid response to Cyclone Pam. Our team has grown, as has our work at Oxfam. While the initial “surge” needed us to bring in specialist skills from across the world, we have also been able to tap into the amazing spirit and talent of the people of Vanuatu.

I have worked with and watched young Ni-Vanuatu people new to Oxfam absorb the Oxfam values — that are so central to what we do — with ease and enthusiasm. Likewise, I am experiencing Oxfam learn and grow from the spirit of these young people — a deeply valuable and rewarding exchange and a privilege; an unanticipated gift from Pam.

Alice at Vanuatu-Efate-Matarisu village. Evelyn signs list to get emergency voucher. Philemon, community leader. Sandi and three sons, Wilkins, William and Philip n front of their house damaged by cycline Pam. Photos: Groovy Banana/OxfamAUS

We have done much. Our Oxfam teams provided life-saving emergency water to communities directly after Pam struck. We have built new longer-term relationships in our recovery work, some with remote communities on small islands. On Epi Island, Oxfam teams were the first to arrive in some communities and provided much needed emergency supplies, and, importantly, a sense that the world out there cared for them. We have continued our work there and on Efate Island. Our expert skills in technical water system restoration have done amazing things, as has our pioneering work in emergency food security, livelihoods and public health and hygiene education. Our partners too have worked hard with us to engage in all of this work. Always making sure that gender, protection of vulnerable community members and sound monitoring, evaluation, learning and accountability mechanisms are core to whatever we do. Together with this, the incredible work that has gone into our coordination role of the Vanuatu Humanitarian Team has been recognised as significant in the response to Cyclone Pam.

Today I look out over Port Vila, from our offices on the hill above the bay, and it is clear that the land is responding to the spirit — healing itself and sharing this with the rest of the world. The green is returning, plants are growing, flowers are dotting the place with tentative colour, markets are reopening, homes are being rebuilt, smiles are getting bigger and children are at school again. Gone are the constant sounds of chain saws cutting away at the trees that fell across our roads and buildings. Gone too are the clouds and smells of heavy smoke that hung across the city when people could only dispose of the debris by burning it. The warped and crushed metal of roofs have been cleared, signs are back up and shattered windows replaced. The harbor is no longer silent, and likewise the airport — we hear the horns of the boats and ships, see their twinkling lights again at night, and hear the flights come in and out of the airport almost as they used to. Somehow, these have become good sounds. Businesses are rebuilding and customers and tourists are returning to enjoy our special place on the planet. Lessons are being learnt and shared, government is working to respond in ways they consider best, and donors, local not-for-profit agencies and international agencies such as Oxfam are doing whatever they can to support. It is an amazing journey.

Of course, all of this will be documented in copious research and evaluation reports. Pages of paper. Some of the work will be critiqued and some applauded depending on the time and audience. This is all normal in the cycle of events after a cyclone of this magnitude. But through these formal processes we should never lose sight of that special spirit, the simple (but, at the same time complex and often elusive) “something special” that has carried us to the point we are at, and will carry Vanuatu beyond this point too.

As the anniversaries of Cyclone Pam come and go we need to continue to embrace the spirit we have experienced; the sprit that has always and will always be at the core of what makes Vanuatu and her people get up, dust themselves off and get on with life in such amazing ways. I said in the early days that there were lessons for the world in this — there have been and will be. Watch this space!